The Rhetoric of Education: Kenneth Winston Starr and Cicero
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Hannah M. Adams ‒ Daniel P. Hanchey ‒ R. Alden Smith The Rhetoric of Education: Kenneth Winston Starr and Cicero Abstract In the Pro Archia, and in his rhetorical dialogues, Cicero reveals ability to blend form with con- tent, to describe best practices while offering himself as an exemplum. Whether we agree with Cicero’s message or not, we can remain confident that he believes in it, for he is embodying his message even as he delivers it. This paper will argue that there are in fact many ways in which Kenneth Winston Starr ‒ federal judge, solicitor general for George H.W. Bush, independent counsel who investigated then President Bill Clinton, and currently Baylor University’s president and chancellor ‒ sounds like Cicero, particularly when it comes to articulating the bases for and the value of liberal education. Like Cicero, Starr associates education with tradition, civic duty and the goal of liberty. And, like Cicero, he reveals that he believes the words he speaks about education, as he embodies and exemplifies them in his very delivery, and indeed in his actions. Un caratteristica riconoscibile di Cicerone, tanto in discorsi come la Pro Archia quanto nei suoi dialoghi retorici, è la capacità di fondere forma espressiva e contenuto, di descrivere buone pra- tiche proponendo se stesso come exemplum. Anche se non si è d’accordo con quanto egli affer- ma, non si può non prestare fede al suo sforzo di “incarnare” il messaggio attraverso la forma e la modalità espressiva. In questo articolo si proverà a dimostrare che, in molti modi, i discorsi pubblici di Kenneth Winston Starr – giudice federale, vice procuratore generale per George H.W. Bush, procuratore indipendente che mise sotto indagine il Presidente Clinton, e ora rettore della Baylor University – “suonano” come quelli di Cicerone, in particolare quando si tratta di discutere e articolare i fondamenti dell’educazione liberale. Come Cicerone, Starr mette in collegamento educazione e tradizione, dovere civico e libertà. Come Cicerone, egli professa di prestare fede alle parole che utilizza per parlare di istruzione, cercando di istituire una piena coerenza tra quanto asserisce nei discorsi, la loro forma espressiva e performativa, e le sue concrete azioni. In the exordium of his defense for Archias, who was among Cicero’s first mentors and teachers in Rome, Cicero begs for his audience’s indulgence for what he calls his «new and unusual kind of speech» (novo quodam et inusitato genere dicendi, 3). In his speech, Cicero seeks to reconstruct Archias’ identity and worth as a citizen in the minds of the jury, as the records that would have demonstrated Archias to be a Roman citizen had been lost in a fire. Although, he states, those records, were they available, would bear Archias’ name, Cicero actually spends the vast majority of the speech on the secondary argument, namely that even if Archias were not a citizen, he deserves to be one. Central to Cicero’s case is his assertion that Archias has value to the state because of his ability to immortalize the glory of Rome through literature. In this way, Cicero’s speech is fairly unique among his other orations, for it offers a discourse on the humanities within a forensic context, albeit in many ways the defense he proffers might be better described as the typical effort of an orator who often found a ClassicoContemporaneo 1 (2015) Orizzonti | 71 The Rhetoric of Education Hannah M. Adams ‒ Daniel P. Hanchey ‒ R. Alden Smith unique approach to whatever case he was involved with. Still, the speech’s widely cel- ebrated “unique” feature is its signal encomium of poetry1. This encomium, more than any other feature of the speech, has drawn readers back to the Pro Archia for millennia. But while it may be Cicero’s only epideixis on poetry within a legal setting, the panegyric should by no means be understood as external to his basic forensic argument nor as a divergence from the kind of feelings Cicero generally espouses on literature and study2. Within his oratorical work, it is also “unique” that Cicero deploys in the Pro Archia a highly-figured rhetorical style, which reflects and imitates the very poetry he lauds3. Yet, though it is unique to his speechcraft, beyond the genre of oratory, Cicero does some- thing similar in his rhetorical dialogues De Oratore and Brutus, wherein he describes the best orators and their oratory while simultaneously demonstrating his own command of rhetoric and his place within the oratorical tradition of Rome4. This ability to blend form with content, to describe best practices while offering himself as an exemplum of them is one of the chief factors that makes Cicero so compelling and worthy of attention. On the one hand, as in the Pro Archia, it demonstrates Cicero’s artistry, while on the other it reflects a certain integrity to his method. Whether we agree with Cicero’s message or not, we can remain confident that he believes in it, for he is embodying his message even as he delivers it. This merger of message and example is also a hallmark of the contemporary ora- tory of Kenneth Winston Starr. This paper will argue that there are in fact many ways in which Kenneth Winston Starr ‒ federal judge, solicitor general for George H.W. Bush, independent counsel who investigated then President Bill Clinton, and currently Baylor University’s president and chancellor ‒ sounds like Cicero, particularly when it comes to articulating the bases for and the value of liberal education. Like Cicero, Starr associates education with tradition, civic duty and the goal of liberty. And, like Cicero, he reveals that he believes the words he speaks about education, as he embodies and exemplifies them in his very delivery, and indeed in his actions. In his expression of his personal overarching worldview, Starr ever acknowledges that the founding fathers of the United States established lasting principles upon which we must draw. Rather than chasing trends, Starr avers foundational values, aligning them 1 HANCHEY (2012) comments on how many of the unique features of the Pro Archia, including the enco- mium, are mirrored by Cicero’s other citizenship speech, the Pro Balbo. 2 Petrarch, who discovered and copied a manuscript of the Pro Archia in 1333, stands at the front of a long line of scholars and laypersons alike whom, in this particular oration, Cicero has inspired and will continue to inspire to the study of humanities. 3 For a full discussion of Cicero’s style in the speech, see GOTOFF (1979). For the use of a poetic style as a reflection of the poetry and humanities that the speech celebrates, see DUGAN (2005, 21-42), BERRY (2006) and NESHOLM (2010). 4 De Orat. 1, 70 even compares the skills of the poet and the orator. Cicero comments meta-rhetorically on his dialogue style at 3, 80, where he celebrates the ability to speak on multiple sides of an issue in the midst of his literary dialogue. For Cicero’s rhetorically skillful method of implying that he is himself the culmination of his narrative history in Brutus, see DUGAN (2005, 189-232). On Cicero’s strategies generally in Brutus, see the introduction to Marchese’s commentary (2011). ClassicoContemporaneo 1 (2015) Orizzonti | 72 The Rhetoric of Education Hannah M. Adams ‒ Daniel P. Hanchey ‒ R. Alden Smith whenever possible with modern practice. His commitment to that mos maiorum (“the ways of the ancestors”) is obvious from many of his speeches in which he takes on the is- sue of higher education, and in particular, from the opening words of a speech delivered at the Pope Center in North Carolina in the fall of 2013. Starr begins his remarks by quoting the Northwest Ordinance of the Continental Congress, which states: Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. From this starting point he proceeds to lay out the history of higher education with- in the United States, how it has evolved from a gift of books by John Harvard to a small college in Massachusetts, through the attentions and efforts of great American leaders such as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln, all the way to its current state5. As Starr describes it in his speech, education and the mission of a free state are fundamentally intertwined. Education, Starr asserts, should promote freedom, secure the blessings of liberty, and promote culture and freedom not only in America but around the world. For Ken Starr, liberty is at the core of good government and at the core of the American experience6. We can trace a similar line of thought in the philosophical works of Cicero. Starting with De Oratore, written in a time when the Roman republic was in a state of flux under the leadership of the unofficial triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, Cicero high- lights the value of education to the state: Quam ob rem pergite, ut facitis, adulescentes, atque in id studium, in quo estis, incumbite, ut et vobis honori et amicis utilitati et rei publicae emolumento esse possitis. Therefore, young men, carry on, just as you are doing and stay steady in those studies in which you are involved, so that you may bring honor to yourselves, aid to your friends, and benefit to your republic. A few years later, when Caesar’s power base had been secured, Cicero continued to insist on the value of rhetorical and philosophical education for the good man. Though the very existence of a program of philosophical dialogues is proof enough, he explicitly claims in Acad. 2, 6 that «The study of philosophy is most worthy of the best and most distinguished person» ([philosophiae] tractatio optimo atque amplissimo quoque dignis- sima est).